For the Chinese, the drive toward growing political and economic power is part of an ongoing effort to restore China's past greatness and remove the lingering memories of history's humiliations. This widely praised book explores the 1500-1800 period before China's decline, when the country was viewed as a leading world culture and power. Europe, by contrast, was in the early stages of emerging from provincial to international status while the United States was still an uncharted wilderness. D. E. Mungello argues that this earlier era, ironically, may contain more relevance for today than the more recent past. Building on the author's decades of research and teaching, this compelling book illustrates the vital importance of history to readers trying to understand China's renewed rise.

D. E. Mungello has been a leading scholar in Sino-Western history. From 1979 to 2016 he founded and edited a journal dedicated to the post-Mao Zedong era revival of contacts between Chinese and foreign historians. His books include Leibniz and Confucianism, Curious Land , The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500-1800, The Spirit and the Flesh in Shandong, 1650-1785, Drowning Girls in China: Female Infanticide since 1650, Western Queers in China: Flight to the Land of Oz, The Catholic Invasion of China, This Suffering is my Joy: The Underground Church in Eighteenth-Century China and Interracial Lovers in Revolutionary China. He is the Professor of History Emeritus at Baylor University.